


before the world dies at my door

by parkadescandal



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Bittersweet, Character Study, During Canon, F/M, Introspection, Pre-Relationship, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24763462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parkadescandal/pseuds/parkadescandal
Summary: Kairi, guardian and princess, on the case of whether two lights ever make a dark. (It's a little more complicated than that—she might just have to make herself from scratch.)
Relationships: Axel & Kairi (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi & Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi/Ventus (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	before the world dies at my door

**Author's Note:**

> A reflection on Kairi in the timeline surrounding KHIII as she sorts out her role in the grand scheme while dealing with everything shifting around her in dramatic fashion. Full disclosure that this narrative assumes that she has (unresolved) romantic feelings for Sora which remain unrequited. It also sets up a potential relationship between her and Ventus. The parallels... I just think they're neat.

"Are you ever going to talk about it?" he asked drolly, dryly—without regard; Kairi braced herself.

"What?" she said, but she already knew. Somehow you always knew, with Axel.

"How you're hanging on to the concept of him. Not planning to talk to him at all."

She fell silent, suspicious enough on its own.

"Don't wanna let that one go, huh," Axel finished definitively.

"And you're one to talk." As low a blow could go, there wasn't enough truth contained for it to really sting, but it read all the same. It was bold of him to make statements after all the barely concealed moping about friends lost and forgotten and betrayed… and well. Perhaps she wasn't being entirely fair.

"Never said I wasn't," he replied amiably, a preemptive olive branch. "Takes one to know one, after all."

They resumed a quiet silence, but she rattled it around in her brain some more, let it bounce around ping pong style, the same way the fire spell they managed to reflect all throughout the corridors of the forest ricocheted around the tree clearings for an age or two; she didn't remember the last time she'd felt so joyous—magic, she could do. When it came to the swinging, the brunt force brutality, the limits pushed—there wasn't as much revel in it for her as for some. In spite of his history, she thought Axel might feel the same.

She looked down at her hand, at the grass below, the sheets of parchment and pen neatly laid against the stump. _Dear my first love, my childhood sweetheart, my closest friend—when did the last part become the least important?_

"I think… I'm going to hold on until I'm ready," she said softly.

"Dunno if there's anything else you can do." Axel had lost his heart and his home too, she remembered, had also watched the people he loved dearest go bitter. There was a lot they could take from one another when it came to making things right—it was what they were there for, after all. The desire to help threaded them together even more than any strange coincidences. Possibly as much as the desire to reclaim a little of themselves within it. He gestures toward the paper below. "I'm not gonna stop you."

_Maybe you should_ , Kairi thought, but dismissed the thought with the shake of her head. If she wanted to start taking things for herself, this was definitely a good place to start.

With the world now so much wider, the rug was pulled out from under her when it came to _want_. What she thought she wanted, what she dreamed of, what she poured around her core—none of that was the same any more. If she could, she'd get those wants back, no question. If there were anything she wanted, it was simple simplicity, a steady rhythm, a life staying moored like three little wooden boats on a dock. But the world ended. Then the universe opened. And the life she'd been ignoring came bounding up at full speed.

She didn't want great power. She didn't want to be held as leverage, or to be bargained, or to get in the way—though she would have liked it much better if someone had shown her how to get _out_ of it. And when it came down to it, she could almost admit she missed her role: the girl left behind, to bolster and support, to pine and sacrifice. She wished she could stay. That it was still that easy. She wished it was _right_. Responsibility squeezed around her heart from the moment she had it restored, and she knew now how little she had prepared for it.

It was charming and appropriate, she thought: the princess and the hero of light. It was terribly traditional until it wasn't. When it had seemed that instead of growing up and planting roots in the idyll of the islands that they would fill those new roles together, they'd been snatched from that destiny, too.

It didn't make what they had any _less_ —in fact, it was more special now that it would stay frozen in time. If she allowed it. She saw the way lost love and rote ritual soured the insides, the way resentment would fog up the magic two people put together beyond repair—the first kind of magic she'd ever known—sleight of held hands and butterflies conjured from thin air. She would carry it with her for the rest of her life: this sweetness, this kindness, brought about by the urge they had to become better people for each other. But practice made perfect.

If she had a responsibility, to the light, to the keyblade, to her friends, it was to take what she’d learned and share it, and to let him do so in return. Maybe if she called it permission, then she'd allow herself to admit the same: _it’s okay if you don’t feel the way you used to feel about me. But I'd like it if we didn't pretend it never happened: it's never not going to be love_.

She knew what magic looked like now, and it wasn't what she expected. She hadn't considered that she might have been the one who would change.

Before she could even process the warmth of the island sun she was blindsided by goodbye, and just like that it was taken from her too—dethroned by a sky from where it might never crown again. Immediately she was forced out by the cold, loosed from home and horizon, Destiny stolen from her once again.

It was on Axel's suggestion that Kairi returned, to poke around the corridors and try and find all the little echoes that remained, hunting for shadows in the place that tugged at her heart before it had even come back to her. Radiant Garden was different, but there was that same strange setting feeling situated right there in her chest, one that had crept in at some point between falling conscious and dropping awake the first time she’d watched a part of herself disappear before her eyes. It was a loaded feeling, one she had realized before they left Hollow Bastion, but she had never forgotten it since, not even when she had forgotten everything else. And she knew that it wasn't where she belonged, and neither was it where she wanted to be, but she knew that it may be where she needed to exist, for a stretch. Now she could return, and sink into it a little more. Find what had stopped her so thoroughly for so long; which partition in her brain had cut off all curiosity.

It was there in Radiant Garden that she stumbled upon Ventus—though it was more him tumbling into her where she reflected out on the outskirts, where the yawning gap of eternity below stretched out among the rubble. One day back on the islands she'd heard the story, gut churning with nausea—people she ( _'d thought she'd_ ) loved, capable of such grand horror… She shook her head and readjusted, and found herself smiling at a familiar grin and bright blue eyes. She was delighted to find them divorced from the bittersweetness sheltered in her chest. A fresh start.

He sat without a word beside her. The energy was pleasantly familiar—the light, in totality. Not just safe and comfortable, but refreshing as well. Kindred spirits.

"I don't know what to do anymore," he admitted abruptly.

"Oh?" she said, surprised. She thought she'd be more irritated at the burden of having someone else's problems unloaded onto her—confidants they were not, and she _should_ have been shocked that it came so prematurely. But there was already familiarity—they'd met before, once upon a dream, flitted at the edges of each other inside the same heart. She smiled—that was probably intimate enough to skip the introductions.

"One of the last times I was here was when I was running after Terra," Ventus elaborated, and if he weren't so close she may not have picked up on the slight dampening of his usual cheer. She liked his voice. It was sweet, a little scratchy, kind of cozy. She'd hover in the corner on occasion to listen to him talk to his friends, about anything and everything, feeling wrapped up in it like she was part of something.

"But you're all together again, right? You must be so happy."

"Yeah." He looks down at his hand. "I really am. …But something's missing."

She didn't need him to elaborate. Perhaps it wasn't the same thing in her that had left a hole where there wasn't one, but she could imagine just fine.

"It never used to bother me all that much that I couldn't remember anything. Now I know that I'm… some made up light. It scares me. I wonder who I was before that. No one ever told me, and I didn't think I ever needed to find out. But now I know… it's something dangerous."

She suddenly realized that she'd unconsciously tilted her head to consider him—leaned in a little closer like a plant to the sun, something anxious inside pulling her in: excitement. She understood every word.

"Do you think you're ready to face it?" she started slowly, without looking away from him. "Whatever it is?"

"As long as I've got everyone beside me, I think I can. But it doesn't stop me from worrying."

"Don't worry," she found herself saying. "I can do that for you."

He looked up at her in surprise, really looking at her for a moment, then broke into a grin. She smiled in return, a little disarmed, but more like she'd put her guard down than had it broken.

"Thanks. I should've known you'd be so nice, Kairi. I always wanted to get to know you better."

He laughed softly, and they averted gazes, glancing out at the water fountain ahead.

"So you knew me," she asks.

"Yeah. Not perfectly. I didn't ever get anything really clearly. But it was fun! I mean, I guess just to feel everything happen over such a long time. At least I was never bored!"

His eyes shone from behind the hand he'd thrown up in emphasis—Kairi stifled a laugh behind her hand. "Guess not, huh."

"I feel like I got to know the best of everyone first. I don't think I could have asked for a better first impression. It was like… looking through a magnifying glass all the time, and seeing all the greatest parts of someone from really close. I always kinda felt right at home around you guys, just because of the way Sora felt about all of you. He loves you all a lot."

She looked to her hand, and a little bubble of butterflies flitted about to disrupt the melancholy that gathered in her stomach. She wanted to ask Ventus what kind of love Sora felt. She wanted to know if it was the right kind. If it was ever truly quite the same as the one she had—which she still wasn't quite so sure about herself, and now might never be. But it seemed kind of personal. But really, it seemed kind of simple—he'd already answered her question. She gave him just the slightest smile.

“I can’t let him do all the work for me, though, especially since he doesn’t always get everything right. I think I’d like to start over, if that’s okay with you.” She extended her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Ventus. I’m Kairi. Can I call you Ven?”

He laughed, and reached his hand up to give a firm shake in return.

“Sure can. All my friends do.”

They talked, like old friends, then new ones, until an age later when Ventus looked toward the descending sun with a start before reluctantly begging off to check in with Aqua. _She’s trying hard not to keep tabs on me,_ he said, _but I’m more worried about her worrying, y’know?_ Kairi pursed her lips together, because she did.

She nodded at him, taking the hand he extended once more— _Pleased to make your acquaintance, Kairi,_ he said with smiling eyes through a handshake, much gentler than the first, before he disappeared.

_See you soon_ , she thought after him as he left, and she stayed for a moment until a chill moved through to remind her that she should probably endeavor to end up someplace a little less alone.

She followed the feeling and found herself drawn to the courtyard, where she sat in the center with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. She stared ahead at the wrought iron gate and for a long and steady moment willed the past to stay where it was. But as she concentrated enough to peer beyond, squinting toward the future, she realized that she couldn’t step ahead without first looking behind her. The relief of quiet epiphany pulled her face from steel to sunshine, and she smiled, pleased to remember that nothing was set in stone.

**Author's Note:**

> [title](https://youtu.be/y1jPou1vxws) (imho a very fitting song for her)
> 
> ty from the bottom of my kingdom heart as always for the cheerleading & beta, pine
> 
> While I was doing some healing of my own in the days leading up to _Re:Mind_ I started reflecting on Kairi and how complicated she had the potential to be, then came to the conclusion that it would make a lot of sense if she were, perhaps, a little melancholy. The early draft of this was the result. The game came around, I was delighted with it, and I cemented this characterization around what I saw as a bittersweet look at first loves, growing up, and how unpredictable the outcome is when they're combined.
> 
> I started to clean it up in earnest again a few weeks back but decided to hold onto it for a bit. Lately some canon tidbits made me think back to what I realize was my original point: you're allowed to change—just as much as you're allowed to acknowledge the things that got you there without renouncing or revising them. Even if your feelings are different, the person you were and the people you loved will still be important. Though it's too early to have any expectations, as of today it looks like there's a small possibility canon could head in a similar direction, so I figured there's no time like the present. Thanks for reading. 💖


End file.
